Inventory management may involve accurately tracking quantity, location, and/or other characteristics of stored items. Improper inventory management can lead to improper order fulfillment, delayed order fulfillment, and additional costs.
Inventory discrepancies may occur as a result of replenishing a first container containing a first item with one or more units of an incorrect second item. A customer order for the first item may then be incorrectly filled with one or more units of the second item from the first container. Also, time and resources may be wasted detecting and correcting the item misplacement.
Inventory discrepancies may also occur as a result of placing the first container in an incorrect storage location, and placing a different second container in an expected storage location of the first container. A customer order for the first item may then be incorrectly filled as a result of retrieving the second container with one or more other items instead of the first container because of the container misplacement. Here again, time and resources may be wasted detecting and correcting the container misplacement.
Inventory discrepancies may also result from improper tracking of item quantity. For instance, a quantity of a first item may not be decremented when one or more units of the first item are used to fulfill a customer order, or when one or more units of the first item are damaged, lost, stolen, misplaced, or are incorrectly counted to begin with. When a customer order for the first item is received, actual inventory of the first item may be less than the expected inventory which may lead to having an insufficient quantity on hand to fulfill a customer order.